Nintendo to Offer Triple Layer of Miiverse Moderation

One of Wii U's biggest features so far is Miiverse. It promises to be a social network on the console, infused with typical Nintendo touches to make it as charming and fun as possible. From a practical perspective, the idea is to communicate with other Wii U gamers to receive game tips, arrange online play and make friends.

Another revelation that's typically Nintendo, however, is that there are plans to put moderation in place to stop users being mischievous and using abusive language or images. There will be three barriers set up to control content posted on the Miiverse platform: an automated filter that searches for specific words, a team of Nintendo staff that monitor content manually and the ability for users to report posts as abusive. This filtering will mean posts won't appear instantly, but Nintendo will monitor user feedback to gauge what's considered an acceptable delay. Iwata personally feels 30 minutes is acceptable, but obviously accepts others may disagree.

Iwata has stated that Miiverse must be a safe place for children, which seems like a perfectly reasonable stance, but the idea of a censored and filtered social network won't appeal to everyone. What do you think? Do you agree with Nintendo's plans, or is there another way?

From the web

Welsh ex-pat Tom is responsible for the day-to-day running of the site. He's the guy to thank for the generally brilliant nature of the content which massages your eyeballs on a daily basis. Also has an unhealthy obsession with all things Bowser.

all i know is that i pity the poor fools who'll be doing the 'manual' moderation. i do hope they'll be paid for their time as opposed to just doing it for the warm fuzzies or something; the power trip will only keep 'em going for so long before they burn out, lol.

I am glad this will be in place. People are too offensive, carnal and discourteous win their online interaction. I don't like reading it, kids should be protected from it. That's why nintendolife is one of the few sites I frequent for its news and community is they keep it clean!

Surely a parental lock is a better way to go? How does Nintendo expect to be able to pay enough staff to moderate these messages?

Let's do a back of the envelope calculation. Assume that Wii U expands to an install base of 25 million at some point in the future. Let's also assume that 75% of those consoles are connected to the Miiverse. Take an example, on average of two messages being sent per user per day. Assume it takes an average of 10 seconds for a Nintendo staff member to read a message, decide if it's OK and click 'accept' (or whatever they need to do).

You have to remember that there are two types of messages here: text-only and picture messages. I imagine text messages will only run through word/phrase filters and will not get much moderation (unless users flag it).

Picture messages, on the other hand, would require moderation and these should be the only ones that might be delayed.

I think the better solution is for younger players with a parental lock on can ONLY see posts by their friends, and for the rest of us it being a 'report content' system, with a filter taking out things as it sees them (but not delaying content).

Alternatively, another solution could be to have things delayed for uses not on your friend list, but being allowed to see anything your friends post, even if said post is not allowed to be seen by the rest of the community, ie how Facebook or Google + allows you to make a status available ONLY to friends you want to see it

I think it needs to be watched. Wouldn't want my kids (that don't exist yet, but) to be exposed to something a creepy old man put out while they are trying to play some Mario. Plus, people's language can be pretty bad.

Nintendo need to moderate it! and considering the miiverse messages can go straight to your console I think 30minutes is a reasonable length of time. I would expect longer but there we go. Hopefully I can get a job as a Nintendo moderator in South Africa

safe guards are obviously needed when kids are on the 'net in any form. however, i felt it was my job to do it when my 2 were younger. i set the parental controls, i monitored who they were conversing with. like all aspects of parenting, it takes a lot of work. but that was part of my job.

nintendo needs to find a middle ground that will, as much as possible, ensure the safety of kids whilst allowing the older (i hesitate to use the word 'mature', ) users some freedom of expression.

nintendo seems to favour tossing the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to the 'net, though.

I'm not sure if I can wait 30 minutes for a response, especially if I post something about a game that I'm REALLY stuck in. Plus, I'm sure there will be hackers who will manage to sneak in "unacceptable" language and pictures.

Why is everyone talking about the children and vulgar content? If I'm ever going to use the Miiverse I want to be sure that there wont be spoilers.And that can't be controlled by a word filter.

30 minutes is fine, it usually can take hours for me to see a new post on a forum, even if it updates instantly. And if you're really stuck in a game, chances are that some other people are as well, so you wont necessarily need to post anything..

Immediately release friend's comments to people, and then filter worldwide ones for kids. I would be completely fine with that, but a 30 minute delay? Sure, have a lot of people on staff to instantly respond to reports, but if parents can't be bothered to monitor their children online enough to even activate a filter then they can't complain when little Timmy finally understands what his dad yelled at the top of his lungs when he broke a glass.

Wait, this is America, of course they can complain, heaven forbid the problem actually is the parents fault; it's the babysitter's aka the video game console and television when Suzy yells profanities at the top of her lungs at the playground.

No for children? You can't put a rating online. Children friendly? I can imagine how limited thatz going to be. That's why children have parents so they can monitor who they add how the add what they say and all sorts of stuff like that. Otherwise this miiverse is going to be just a cool thought that didn't live up to peoples expectations. Seriously you can put a report for abuse fail language, spoiled a game, disturbing posts but nintendo is putting a rated E for everyone for online. The esrb isn't responsible for that.

This is non sense... I mean the idea of a safe, respectful community it's nice but 30 MINUTES TO POST ONE MESSAGE???? Incredible... If the idea it's to get help about a game, we we'll want it as soon as possible because we will be playing in that instant.The idea it's OK but surely there would be better options. What about a filter by age ranges for example? This will be very functional IF IT'S OPTIONAL, as the parental options are now optional. That way and only that way it will be excellent =)

I don't care how long it takes to post "that level was fun", but that much of a delay seems to really defeat the purpose of asking for help in a game. Hopefully you can still send out mass messages to your friends without delay. I can't help but think that parental controls would be simpler. Turn on word filter, only allow communication with friends, don't allow online communication, etc. Then it's on the parents to moderate who their kids are friends with.

But I'm not complaining that they're trying to protect kids and weed out obviously stupid abusive drawings and whatnot. I just want to be able to send out a question to all my friends in a timely manner.

You should change that before everyone gets riled up. Iwata said at most, 30min of delay would be acceptable not that every post will take 30min. They will also be monitoring for any spoilers. Seeing how everyone gets ***** in threads about spoilers I'm sure some of you won't mind.

I'm all for this. I've seen Xbox Live, and I don't want to see that when I turn on my Wii U. 30 minutes is too long though, especially if you're posting a question about a game that you're playing that minute... Wouldn't that mean pausing the game, posting your comment, waiting 30 minutes for it to appear, and waiting a minimum of 30 minutes for an answer? Not exactly useful when there are faqs and forums online accessible in just a few minutes. I'm expecting this to at least be lessened between friends (is a moderator really necessary when your talking to someone you friended?), so a big friends list could help.

I'm wondering though, with all this attention to the text, what are they going to do about the video chat?

Nintendo, it's like you're trying to fail. Why not just give the option to turn it off, or limit chat to friends?Anyway, I''m looking forward to playing a zombie game during lunch break and asking for help, then waiting half an hour for the message to show up, then waiting for someone to answer it, and waiting for their answer to show up, which will take another half hour, by which point my lunch break is over.

I agree with it. Its main purpose is to offer an un-threatening place for anyone to talk about games and game strategies, or other things in moderation. I personally don't want to see people nonsensically posting over-the-top swearing or sexually explicit content, I want it to be a haven for gamers. There's nothing wrong with the filtering, but I can say right now that people will whine and complain about ANY form of censorship simply because it's censorship, even if it's for the greater good.

No one here on Nintendo Life knows (because we have top notch moderators working hard on the clock)! But... in places were there is little, poor or no moderation... it's a clutter of chaos anarchy and madness.

I have to agree with James. There really needs to an option to opt out of moderation. I, like quite alot of people, am disgusted by the casual racism and general idiotic language used by many on Xbox Live. However, being an Irishman, I also like to relax with friends and drop a few F-bombs. I assume you only see messages from people on your friends list anyway, so what's the problem?

Honestly what are you doing Nintendo I really cant care for Miiverse its going to suck just like swapnote sucks
it was kinda fun for 10 mins but i dont use it now it takes to long to chat to people.
Honestly Nintendo just give me voice chat thats all we need I can't believe there is no mention of this if Nintendo want to win the online war (which they won't) then we need mics to talk to our friends i dont want to talk to thousands of little kids. I just want to talk to my friends WHILE I AM PLAYING A GAME there is no excuse if they haven't included this option!. if the 3DS can do voice chat im sure the Wii U can. I don't want to type or select certain words to express myself while playing a game (Mario Kart 7)
Nintendo really need to open there eyes to the reality of the world most kids these days under 10 swear there heads off and talk . Get over it
Man I was so excited for the Wii U I'm slowly getting irritated by it now

Moderation of such a huge network will be hard. It's not hard to get past automated checkers. Just put spaces between letters, or swap some out for similar looking characters (a = @, s = $, etc.). Unless they start grouping characters together to weed out substitutes, ignoring spaces/periods when checking for bad words (except when part of valid words after checking with a dictionary), and more, automated censorship will be almost impossible.

Reviewing every comment is also costly, and takes time. My guess is that only graphical ones will be reviewed, while text will be put through complex automated processes (like that mentioned above) with the ability to ask for review if a comment without anything bad in it is accidentally being caught as something offensive. The ability to turn off moderation and view pending comments would also be useful for the older users. If graphical comments and the occasional text comment/flagged comments are too much, a limit could be placed on graphics.

@L4DYK0M1C My sentiments exactly. I actually like the idea that Nintendo has going here though. Too many times I've been annoyed by players (usually of the younger variety) that either swear way too much, use ignorant hate speech, or just spam the crap out of xbox live. I know that's what the mute and block communications features are for but wouldn't it be nice if that kind of stuff didn't happen in the first place? When it comes to people I actually know though there shouldn't be any sort of moderating.

Yeah I think it's necessary, I have seen more than enough abuse and vulgarity on the internet to not want that creeping onto my gaming platform as well. If I want to be offended I'll rather visit an unmoderated forum on the internet. Hopefully private message between friends won't be filtered and then it will be all good. You can complain about it all you like but nintendo has always been very sticky on the point of being family friendly and protecting kids and when my kids are old enough to start playing I'll be happy to let them play on the wii U. To be honest if they didn't have filtering in place I would disconnect the wii U from the internet to avoid having a constant stream of penis drawings on my TV and just live my life as a disconnected troglodyte.

i guess the miiverse isn't really very interactive at all. a whole hour (at the very least) to have an interaction with anyone on there. it's a shame nintendo still don't understand concepts that underpin the whole social/internet element to gaming. a parental control and flagging/banning bothersome posts/posters would be ample. thank god for steam.

I don't think Nintendo's Miiverse service is meant to be a chatroom, so a 30 minute delay is nothing too abhorrent. I assume they'll provide more instantaneous chat options for people on your friends list.

Besides, if I have to endure an occassional 30-minute wait to avoid seeing spoilers attached to every game in existence, I'm all for it. It's that or disabling the system entirely, which would be a shame.

I'm a Fully Grown Person who's really happy with this. All the cruelty, hate, and sexual harassment on Xbox Live and the like totally ruin online gaming on those platforms for me, and just make me sad. As always, keep it up & keep it classy Nintendo. =)

I like the idea of Miiverse, and I'm all for moderation, but I'm not keen on the whole waiting 30 minutes thing.Say if I got stuck in a game or something and wanted help from someone on Miiverse, then I would have to sit around and wait for 30+ minutes before I start getting replies.Not that I'm likely to do that anyway, it'd still be nice to have instant replies to messages.

Allow them to post whatever they want with that word filter thing. Because theres no way to prevent mean comments. If somebody does that caps/Lowercase combo thIng where the capital letters Kinda spEll someTHIng rude, then that could get paSs the radar. There's multiple ways

Man they should just setup parental controls to turn it off for kids. Heck kids these days know about all the swear words & rude words & such so it really should be up to their parents to teach them & actually be their parents, not Nintendo.

Moderation is ABSOLUTELY necessary. People think, every single Wii U game will utilize Miiverse. Comments appear from anyone directly in some games, such as Mario. Spoilers CANNOT be detected by any automated system, so every message, not just the drawn ones, will need to be moderated manually. This isn't a question of kids vs. adults moderation, because comments come from anyone and anywhere directly into your games. Not only this, but comments appear in the "Mii Wara Wara" place from people around the world. Not necessarily friends. Now there definitely should be a way to disable moderation for speaking directly to someone in your friend's list, but only if that comment does not get sent to anyone else's system. Video chat certainly seems to bypass such moderation. Judging by the Nintendo Direct pre E3 video it seems that chat among friends could be instantaneous, so that's a good sign. But anything that could enter a stranger's system MUST be moderated to the fullest extent, else the Miiverse will ultimately fail. The logistics of such moderation seem daunting, especially since it will no doubt take longer to moderate comments specifically designed to circumvent moderation.

They should do an age separation, but I understand that would make it a bit hard to play a game with all gamers, so instead they can make it so that people of certain age groups can't chat or do video chat with individuals of younger/older age groups. The filter would still be there for words, but would be less waiting.

Older age groups should be allowed to enable/disable to filter feature to boost chat times, if someone gets reported and the proof is in the system, they should do a 3 strike rule to ban that character (not from gaming online, but from chatting with others).

If the person thinks that they can create a new character and just continue with inappropriate behavior, then each character thereafter should be banned after one offense. After 3 strikes on a system with 3 different characters, the system should be banned from chat and sharing personal content (if the person is dumb enough to push things to that extent, then they don't deserve to be online with others following the rules). It wouldn't prevent them from playing online though, and the system's status would only be reset once registered by someone else.

If Nintendo doesn't want to ban them from chatting with friends, or people that are considering becoming their friends, there should be a warning that the person was banned from chat for inappropriate language and/or content. I think not being able to openly communicate with others would be best though.

@Tomatoboxer Perhaps that would be a solution, but it seems that doing such would be counter to Nintendo's intentions with Miiverse. The whole point is to have a big community with friends and non-friends meeting and conversing in a safe,clean, family friendly environment. Whether they will be able to pull such a feat off remains to be seen. There may be options to limit interactions to just friends, but the point is Nintendo does not want that to be necessary. Anyone of any age group could access the Miiverse at any time, and Nintendo does not want a few immature people to ruin the experience for everyone. Therefore extensive moderation is necessary. If limiting your own experience with Miiverse is necessary to enjoy oneself, Nintendo will have failed. While such features should definitely be present, Nintendo will only want them to be used as a last resort.

If messages among friends are instant, no problem. But if messages among friends are delayed, this is going to be a completely useless feature because people will have to use phones or laptops for instant communication instead.

The best place to get answers when you are stuck in a game is a FAQ or guide on a site like GameFAQs (yes, I know the forums can be a zoo...I'm talking about FAQs and guides). Using public messages on Miiverse will be a waste of time. The most helpful answer you could give to someone on Miiverse is to refer them to a resource on the web.

In summary:

Instant messaging among friends: cool.Delayed public messaging: a novelty without much practical value.

As i recalled a while back in game informer an article about how gamers talk to each other and the language they use etc. has gotten ridiculously bad. I personally think this will make the online experience MUCH better than 360 and ps3. All i hear on there was trash talking and a lot of hacking too. But i do think 30 minutes wait is a little ridiculous wait time.

@H_Hunter What about the bad kids... or thos annoying 12-year-olds on COD who use the most awful language...?

Just make sure parents know about Parental Controls, maybe ask the kids playing to tell their parents about it, before you Start Miiverse, Nintendo. I will not stand 30 minutes. Maybe one ore two minutes, fine, I can wait... but THIRTY??? I don't like. Just restrict kids to their schoolfriends and maybe their friends.

I love that they're doing this. I was going to stick to just using the GamePad so my dad wouldn't have to see "crude images", to put it nicely, every time I turn on the Wii U, but I don't have to worry about that now. Also, I dislike the lack of courtesy on the internet, and I think this would cause some people to learn to be more courteous. This could possibly make the internet as a whole a slightly better place.

Monitoring racism, sexism, profanity, intimidation, and illegal activities hour after hour, day after day, month after month, year after year. And Nintendo has to do this around the world in how many different languages? I suppose there is a strong marketing incentive behind this. Nintendo said Miiverse will show Miis congregating around games which the console owner doesn't necessarily own. So casual gamers will be alerted to the existence of games they might not otherwise have learned about (since they don't shop for games, don't surf gaming web sites or forums, etc.).

Edit: I just now finished listening to the podcast where the marketing angle was discussed. So, yeah, I'm late to the party on that one.

While I'm in my 30's, I understand that Nintendo are very Disney-esque so I totally forgive them. In fact I own an Xbox 360 and PS3 and I hate some of the messages I get from people (very likely kids) with all sorts of crude language! I want to wring their little necks so a bit of moderation will help!

@FluttershyGuy Hahaha, that's a perfect idea (provided Nintendo has a moderation team for each region and their respective languages so that they can't catch foreign swears as easily) to get around the ahemRUUUURUUUUS
Reminds me of the last couple Assassin's Creed games with every curse in Italian.